I’m very glad that we will soon be seeing a number of these House Republicans replaced – most likely with true conservatives.

First the broad view: Gingrich’s Contract with America could easily be summarized on a single page. This new ‘Pledge to America’ is 21 pages.

That should tell you everything you need to know without further examination.

But it gets worse… much worse.

The preamble and the foreword take up 5 pages. Stuff we already know because this document was manifestly developed in response to vigorous complaints Republicans in the House have been hearing from their constituents for years now. Fluff.

The first ‘Plan’ to create jobs, end economic uncertainty, and make America more competitive starts on page 6. Two more pages of fluff (stuff we already know) before we come to something that looks like a quantifiable ‘plan’ in this pledge to ‘get something done…’ or something.

So what are they finally promising on page 8?

Permanently Stop All Job-Killing Tax IncreasesReally? Can House Republicans really deliver on this? Permanently? What about the 112th Congress? The 113th?

Give Small Businesses a Tax DeductionHey! A big 20% deduction? How about just that much of a tax cut so we don’t need to make those big quarterly payments and ‘owe’ the tax until we can claim the deduction? How much paperwork to get the deduction? This still has the stink of ‘my-money-belongs-to-the-government-until-you-deign-to-give-it-back-to-me’. Thank you GOP ruling class.

You’re starting to get the idea. Nowhere in this ‘pledge’ are deadline dates given as there were in the Contract with America. Fuzzy ideas. No deadline. No provisions for how they’ll be accomplished, possibly without the Senate and certainly over Obama’s objections and veto.

They could have made deliverable commitments about what would never make it out of the House Ways and Means committee, a promise they might be able to keep (at least until something reaches a conference committee), but they didn’t actually commit to something they could actually achieve unilaterally from the House. Worthless.

I won’t bore you with wading through the entire document paragraph by paragraph except for one thing – later in the document they promise to ‘repeal and replace’ healthcare… then promise to get healthcare off the back of small business. So the obvious question is why do they need to get health care provisions off the back of small business if they are really going to ‘repeal’ it? The fact is, it’s smoke and mirrors. Thank you GOP ruling class.

It’s trash.

They know they are in trouble. They don’t have a clue how to get out of trouble.